EverWorld (Book 3 of the Down World Series)

Chapter Forty-Three

The cold air seized my skin halfway down the staircase.

At least, I assumed it was halfway down, because we'd already made at least a dozen corkscrews around the central metal pole, and we still hadn't landed on any kind of floor. It was pitch black around us, and the cold became more and more pronounced as we stepped down, with Alexei's clacking Italian shoes echoing behind my head. It was like the earth itself was swallowing us whole.

I could feel my exposed arms prickling with goosebumps as Alexei walked a bit closer, his hot breath landing on my bare neck. Somehow the sensation made me feel even colder.

Finally, my right foot landed on something hard—cement. And as though the floor were attached to some sort of sensor, a dim red-hued light exploded through the frigid air and my eyes could finally take in the room we had entered.

I stopped dead in my tracks, causing Alexei to crash into my back, almost knocking me over. He chuckled softly, placing large, hot hands on either one of my shoulders to steady himself. By instinct, my hands shot up to either side of my head and my back arched like a cat's, pushing him off.

"Whoa, whoa," he said, gently touching my back again as he walked past me. I could feel the imprint of his palm lingering even after he'd walked by, like an iron had scalded me. I hissed with fear and anger, the sound coming out like a deflating tire.

"What the hell is this?" I asked, turning in a slow circle by the foot of the stairway. The room was a large cave, extending so far back I couldn't see the walls, and it was filled top to bottom with machinery. I looked around furtively for my brother, but if he was here, I didn't see him.

What I could see, however, were tall metal towers housing stacks and stacks of hard drives, with a jumble of yellow and red wires connecting them all like veins running through a body. It was a server, and whatever it was powering must have been huge, because there was enough data storage in this room to power a global search engine ten times over.

"Well?" Alexei asked, a mischievous smile spreading over his taut cheeks. "How did I do?"

"What is it?"

"You know what it is, Marina."

I shook my head. It couldn't be—it wasn't possible.

"It's not done yet, obviously. Still needs the missing piece."

He was waiting for me to ask more questions, but I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

Instead, I eyed the computers that surrounded me, and I had the strangest sensation of staring into a mirror. It was like all the lights and wires were calling to me, asking me to claim them. And I knew beyond a doubt what they were.

It was much bigger than the version of Minerva that Elaheh had kept in her house. But that made sense, of course. Elaheh's machine only needed to power her small dome. This was grander than that.

Alexei was building something that could power the whole world. He was planning the war—this time with himself in charge of it.

"Go on," he prodded, nodding towards the work he was clearly very proud of. "I know you're dying to check it out."

But I didn't need to approach the machinery to notice the most important detail: none of it was turned on. All those little lights and sensors, all those monitor screens and hard drives—they were all dark. "Why isn't it on?" I asked.

He smiled at me, his eyebrows squeezing together, questioning me. "Don't you know?"

I shrugged, tired of playing this game.